SCIENCE, BITCHES

(from the mouth of jesse pinkman)

Staring Into Someone's Eyes For 10 Minutes Can Alter Your Consciousness. Crazaaay! This Is What You Look Like When You Have Sex. NSFW, even if you work in the medical field.

Here's something you don't see every day! Vox has released a video compilation of what it looks like when a couple has sex and when a woman gives birth, all through the lens of an MRI machine.
Why Do Cats Bring Home Dead Animals. It’s an all-too-familiar story for the owners of indoor-outdoor cats: You open the door to let Kitty in for dinner and what does she bring with her?

A dead rodent, of course. Such impolite behavior leaves many cat owners scratching their heads. Why, after all, would your cat need to kill her meals when that bowl of Friskies is filled to the brim? Is she just a whole lot meaner than she looks? Before determining that their cat is simply a cold-blooded killer, cat owners should understand a few facts about what's driving their pet's behavior. Cats are, first and foremost, natural-born hunters, as recent studies of the effects that feral and indoor-outdoor cats have on bird and rodent populations have shown.
Sorry, But Your Cat Is Actually A Total Jerk. It's Just Science.
Bad news for all you cat lovers: That feline you are obsessed with is a total jerk.

Sure, cats are cute, soft, lovable and an endless source of viral GIFs and memes, but in actuality, they kinda suck. Don't hate us for this blasphemy just yet.
There's a Scientific Reason Why It Feels So Damn Good to Cuddle. You know how soft and smooth your partner's skin feels on your fingertips when you cuddle up next to them at night or give them a massage?

Research says their skin probably isn't as delicate and baby-soft as you think it is — in fact, it might just be a total illusion. Scientists at the University College of London discovered the softness of your significant other's skin is likely a trick of the mind to keep you interested in cuddling, stroking and massaging your partner.

The person being touched feels pleasure because they have sensory cells specifically attuned to this slow, comforting stroke, which, when activated, causes them to feel a warm, fuzzy, happy feeling. But this active stroking creates sensory pleasure for the toucher as well, by creating the illusion that their partners' skin is smooth and soft to the touch. "Giving pleasure is receiving pleasure," Fotopoulou told Mic. The science of touch has evolutionary roots.
Science Has Figured Out Why Bears Go Down on One Another, and It's Depressing. A couple weeks ago, an article was published in the journal Zoo Biology, written by a Croatian team of biologists who had studied a pair of captive bears over the course of ten years.

Via Zazzle It would be impossible for me to summarize research psychologist Dr.

Jesse Bering’s sprawling 2010 Scientific American essay, “One reason why humans are special and unique: We masturbate. A lot,” so I won’t even try. However, amongst the more interesting things discussed in the article—trust me, it’s a great read—is the fact that most men basically need to spill their seed, drain the vein, etc, at a bare minimum, every 72 hours. And some gents obviously feel that itch much more acutely. Pair that notion with studies that found women’s bodies actually rejected sperm that had overstayed its welcome in the male testes (had not been flushed out) by 48 hours.
Is Masturbation Good For You?
Microscopic footage of a needle moving across the grooves of a record. You would think that if you have an electron microscope and a record player, you’re most of the way there to being able to record close-up footage of a needle traversing the grooves of a long-player record.

Well, you would be wrong. It was actually quite a challenge, as the Applied Science YouTube channel recently demonstrated in vivid and mind-blowing detail.
How I Felt After 70 Days of Lying in Bed for Science. In November, we ran a story about a NASA study that was paying Andrew Iwanicki $18,000 to lie in bed for three months.

This is how the remainder of the study went. I woke up on December 2, and for the first time in 70 days, I stood up. Or at least I tried to.
How many bryophytes are there in New York and are any of them rare?
Nat Cleavitt Bryophytes compose a significant, although, as yet, not fully known portion of the state flora.

Ketchledge (1980) remains the most recent checklist of mosses in the state and reports 461 species. Published additions to the list add another ten bryophyte species (Eckel 1987, Slack et al. 1988, Eckel & Shaw 1991, Andrus et al. 1994, Town et al. 1994). There is no published list of liverwort and hornwort taxa for the entire state of New York, but Schuster (1949) reported 132 species for central and western parts of the state.

Based on lists for the nearby smaller states of Vermont (McQueen 1992) and New Hampshire (Cleavitt 2004) this number will likely approach 150-170 species with coastal systems and the Adirondacks region included. Perhaps more impressive than simple species richness are the ways that bryophytes act as crucial participants in both indicating and maintaining ecological integrity.
Bryophyte Files for Bryologists. This section was created to aid in dissemination and exchange of information relating to the conservation of bryophytes in the United States.

Bryophytes are a synthetic plant group including the mosses, liverworts and hornworts - plants that all have gametophyte-dominant life cycles. All plants alternate between the gametophyte (generation that produces gametes: egg and sperm) and the sporophyte (generation that produces spores). For the majority of plants (ferns, cone-bearing and seed-bearing plants) the generation that you see on the landscape is the sporophyte generation. A gametophyte-dominant life cycle has many interesting ecological ramifications including the favoring of small size and poikilohydry (allowing water content to fluctuate rather than expending energy to maintain constant turgor).

Your Thoughts Can Release Abilities Beyond Normal Limits. There seems to be a simple way to instantly increase a person’s level of general knowledge. Psychologists Ulrich Weger and Stephen Loughnan recently asked two groups of people to answer questions. People in one group were told that before each question, the answer would be briefly flashed on their screens — too quickly to consciously perceive, but slow enough for their unconscious to take it in.

The other group was told that the flashes simply signaled the next question.
Why Adorable Puppies Can Make You Feel Violent. Cute aggression is a particularly strange phenomenon. When we see something so cute, or even think about it – like a baby kitten, stumbling across the floor – we first experience a tsunami of positivity, an overwhelming accumulation of fuzzy happiness. Then, somewhat perplexingly, this feeling sometimes coexists with the urge to squeeze the kitten to death. This effect is recognized by scientists, and a study published earlier this year in the journal Psychological Science explains that this secondary, negative response may be trying to counteract the out-of-control positive one.

The research group from Yale University coined the term “cute aggression,” and it is thought to belong to one of a series of paradoxical combinations of positive and negative emotions, which also include nervous laughter or tears of joy.
The Bug We Love to Hate. Scorned by city dwellers, the much-maligned cockroach is one of the great success stories of evolution 01-01-1993 // Richard Wolkomir Behind the U.S.
Beyond the Human Eye: Orchid Roots: Botanical Sponges. You can crudely divide orchids into two groups: ground orchids, rooted in the soil - like Pleione species, for example - and epiphytic orchids like the one below, that often grow on the branches of trees in tropical forests.

The dangling roots of the epiphytic types have a dual role, sometimes anchoring the plant and always acting as storage vessels for water that they absorb from mist and sudden tropical downpours. If you cut a section through one of these roots (above) you can see their unique structure, that allows them to absorb and store water. The bright yellow ring of thick-walled cells at the bottom of the image above is the plant's internal plumbing - the pipes (xylem vessels) that conduct water from the roots to the leaves and flowers. Beyond that the thin-walled blue cells are the packing cells that are alive and contain some chloroplasts, like the leaves.

7 Fascinating Facts About Bats. Here’s What Sex Looks Like From INSIDE The Vagina. IPAs Are Giving You Man Boobs. ‘Sexual depravity’ of penguins that Antarctic scientist dared not reveal. Landmark polar research about the Adelie penguin’s sex life by Captain Scott’s expedition, deemed too shocking for the public 100 years ago, is unearthed at the Natural History Museum It was the sight of a young male Adelie penguin attempting to have sex with a dead female that particularly unnerved George Murray Levick, a scientist with the 1910-13 Scott Antarctic Expedition.

Io9.gizmodo. How Brain Implants (and Other Technology) Could Make the Death Penalty Obsolete. Love Sick: Your Body Can Literally Repel A Guy Who's Wrong For You. The Chemist Who Hasn't Showered in 12 Years Explains Why He Doesn't Stink. What Do Cats Think About Us? You May Be Surprised. Since cats first got their adorable claws into us about 9,500 years ago, humans have had a love affair with felines. Today more than 80 million cats reside in U.S. homes, with an estimated three cats for every dog on the planet. (Watch a video about the secret lives of cats.)
Gizmodo. Moss Reproduction. At regular intervals depending on species and weather condition, mosses produce small sexual structures known as archegonium (female structure that produces egg cells), or antheridium (male structure that produces sperm cells). These can occur on different parts of the same plant but more often on different plants.

The male plant sometimes has a visible rosette at the shoot tip, which contain a mass of antheridia among protective hairs or surrounded by modified leaves.
Blue Planet Biomes. Beneficial insects in the landscape: #55 Giant Water Bug (Lethocerus americanus)
With the Giant Water Bug (Lethocerus americanus), nature has outdone itself on the weirdness scale.
Lifes Little Mysteries.